


The Curious and Wholly Unnatural Circumstance of Being Quite Beside Oneself

by Darjeweling



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crack, Gen, Humour, Work In Progress, just a little anyway, warning for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-14 21:46:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2204187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darjeweling/pseuds/Darjeweling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immediately post-regeneration, the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor realises everything that is wrong with his life and wastes no time resolving the mess that his predecessor left. Arguably a prequel to 'Deep Breath' - time will tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a fix-it fic in my pit of disappointment immediately after The Time of the Doctor, never found the courage to post, and recently rediscovered it on my hard drive. Hence, Twelve's characterisation may be slightly askew from Deep Breath.

"Do you have any idea how to fly this thing?"

Clara blinked at the stranger before her. She was frozen, hands grasping the console railings, and her mouth offered only stuttered silence in response.

The Doctor snapped his fingers impatiently, not looking up. "Well, girl?" He was circling the console, new hands moving like spider legs over every lever, every button, acquainting them. "I asked you a question, now fucking answer it!"

"I – I don't know, Doctor!" she squeaked. The Doctor never swore, _her_ Doctor never swore—

"You don't know how to fly, or you don't know if you don't know how to fly? Omega's pulsating _cock_ , girl, I'll be requiring more specificity than that!"

"I don't know how to fly!" Clara shouted over the sudden screeching and crashing of the ship. "I just – I just travel with you, with him, with the Doc—”

The Doctor, quite calmly, flipped a little flashing switch. There was a whirring sound that slowed; the room stopped spinning; the sudden silence was like going deaf.

Clara realised she was hyperventilating, and stopped.

"Well it's a good job that one of us does," the Doctor said. His new voice, like his new eyes – a chill blue – was cold. Also, Scottish. Did Gallifrey have a Scotland? He stood fully erect, chin raised, perfectly composed. He stared at his companion, then came round the console towards her.

Clara barely kept from flinching as he leaned in.

The Doctor's latest upgrade, as it were, was as angular as Clara had ever seen him. She had seen him taller, and thinner, and older, yet there was a fierceness to this one's eyes, and a gauntness to his cheeks, and an unnerving lope to his gait that, for the very first time, made her afraid of him. His every move, his every feature, seemed predatory. She had been there with him for every change, and been there for him after. She knew all of him, and she loved all of him.

But before her now was a stranger, and that stranger was glaring at her for all the universe like she was  just as much a stranger to him.

"You..." he said, squinting, and Clara prepared herself. "Are fucking _short_."

Clara's mouth fell open. Her eyes flashed, and she reacted instinctively with the kind of retaliation that had landed her filing her nails in detention so often. "Yeah, well you... are very fucking tall!" She flinched at her own crudeness but managed a glare all the same, despite her vertical disadvantage. "But I've seen you taller," She flicked her hair, nonchalantly, "so don't act like you're anything special this time round."  

The Doctor, so suddenly she jumped a little, bared his teeth in a smile. They were small and neat and rather pointy; wolffish. The bark had always been more powerful than the bite for the Doctor; a universe where both were equally terrible spoke ill for his enemies. 

The predator before her spun abruptly on his heels.

"I don't like railings," he announced. “You know what railings are? They’re safe, they’re orderly, they’re _tame_ , that’s what railings are, and that is not, _not_ what I am, I _mean_ , what kind of renegade TARDIS flies all around the universe and back again before you can say 'still not fucking ginger' and has fucking health and safety regulations, _hm_?"

Clara could not believe her ears. In fact, her eyes and her ears might as well have nipped off for a nice holiday in the Med for all the believing they were doing.  

"And who the _fuck_ wrote that?" The Doctor was glaring with his hands on his hips at the Circular Gallifreyan above the console. Glaring seemed to have already become his signature weapon. "It's like a fucking comma orgy for a club of voyeuristic typos. That'll have to go."

"Doctor—"

"And just what the transdimensional fuck is this decor? Where's the interior regenerative unit, I'll be having a fucking word with it..."

"Doctor—!"

"Stop talking. And what exactly in the name of Rassilon's sweetly copulating knob am I _wearing_?"

Clara spun around at a sudden _riiiiiiiiip_ , then hiccuped a gasp and turned her back just as fast. The man had _muscle tone,_ his bare back narrow yet practically roped. Even his youthful predecessor – _her_ Doctor, she thought with a mental snivel – had never had that. There was the unmistakable sound of unzipping, then a scuffle, then a "Fuckedy _fuck!_ ", followed by a bang. Clara focused on her breathing and laid both hands around the railing.

"You okay?" She said it more like a statement, no emotion behind it. She wondered vaguely if the TARDIS contained shock blankets, then wondered who needed them more.

There was no answer but further scufflings, and those sounded distant. She risked a glance back.

The new Doctor, the twelfth but technically thirteenth, the terrifying old man that had replaced her beautiful, sunny best friend, was nowhere to be seen. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding, and a few tears that she had.  

Over on the floor by the console, like a discarded paper hat after the party, was the ribbonlike form of the eleventh Doctor's bow tie.

Clara's lip wobbled as she bent to pick it up. Crouched, she held it between both hands, running the soft, not-quite-Earthly material through her fingers. She brought it to her face. Breathed him in.

There was no time machine in the universe that could bring him back to her.

She let herself slide fully to the floor. Then to her side. Then she was curled up into herself, the stud of her oversized earrings pressing into her cheek,  and either fell quickly into sleep or slowly into a faint.

~

 

The TARDIS had a breeze. Actually, given her size, it probably classified as a gyre, maybe a diurnal one – either way, the Doctor had never noticed until he found himself newly regenerated and striding through the corridors utterly starkers. 

He liked this body. It was tall and thin and strong, and when he caught sight of himself in a full length mirror its age brought more than pleasure or relief, but _rightness_ : he had been an old man in a young man's body for far too long. And covered in _layers_ for far too long as well; layer after layer, shirts and waistcoats and greatcoats, velvet and leather and pinstripe and _tweed_ , tweed! The clutter of his past incarnations, both of mind and body, astounded him. He felt he was walking on water, walking above the ocean of his past – no longer swimming through it but above it. He felt clear, clean. New. He could feel every whip of the air against his naked skin, every slight change in temperature and trace element composition, like how he would imagine the scales of a shark kept it effortlessly informed as it cut through its watery kingdom. His bare feet sensed every slight gravitational shift, every change in temperature from the sub-level  machinery, the slightest changes in texture.

He liked it. Perhaps he wouldn't bother finding the wardrobe at all.

He followed the prevailing wind. In his vast, terrible Time Lord mind, not only better constructed than our own but with a lease far longer than any human's, the twelfth incarnation of the being that called himself the Doctor set his new brain to the test – all his memories and all his knowledge and all his wisdom, all of it threading through an unfamiliar configuration of cells and synapses. Thoughts leapt like sparks before his eyes out of nowhere. Ideas hurtled into formation in great collisions that burned. His mind's eye had got itself a new pair of glasses, and his past was bright and savage and hot, a dying star. 

He flicked it aside. He needed to make room in his head. Bigger on the inside it may have been, but not _that_ big.   

When he realised the TARDIS was in fact changing in his footsteps, floors reconfiguring in the wake of each naked footfall and ceilings growing tall in the dark of his shadow, the Doctor only smiled. The smile narrowed his eyes and twisted his lips, more of a smirk, and it tasted as good in his mouth as unfamiliar spice.

So, no need for a wardrobe or the interior designers. Time for a change of plan.

"Looks like I'm going to need myself some montage music," the Doctor announced.

The TARDIS complied.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Oh, Momma, I'm in fear for my life from the long arm of the law,_

_Law man's a-put an end to my runnin' and I'm so far from my home..._

 

By the time the Doctor found his way back to the console room, it was to a completely different sight. 

_Oh, Momma, I can hear you a-cryin', you're so scared and all alone..._

The room was now square and all at one level, with six huge windows of a three-by-two layout covering each wall, revealing a spectacular panorama of the cosmos in every direction. The console in the centre, largely unaltered but for the lack of Circular Gallifreyan, had something small curled up at its foot.

_Hangman is comin' down from the gallows and I don't have very long..._

The Doctor strode over to it. Even without any form of heel on his feet the TARDIS knew to echo as he went.

"Oi," he nudged the figure with a foot. "Claire. Get up."

The figure stirred as she came round. "It's Clar– _aaaaah!_ "

"Clar _aah_ , then. You seem to assume I have some magical thing called short term memory right now. Oh, for fuck's sake, girl, have you never seen a naked Time Lord before? Pull yourself together. They're much like naked humans, now stop your quibbling and grab hold of that knob there."

“ _Grab the—!_ "

"I said _grab the fucking knob_ , that one above the speedometer dials, now quick to it!"

Clara, rubbing the top of her head where it had bashed into the console, found the required lever, did as was asked, then shut her eyes again.

The TARDIS hummed to life, a great pulse of energy that one more felt than heard, then there was the unmistakable sound of the central column in motion.

_The jig is up, the news is out, they've finally found me..._

"Where are we going?" she asked, trying and failing not to wince at the rush of air that signified the Doctor's proximity as he dashed about flicking switches.

_The renegade, who had it made, retrieved for a bounty..._

"Do you remember the Daleks, Claire? And the Cybermen?" There was a sudden array of twisting and flicking and spinning sounds, like the Doctor was on an especially good run practising his _Bop It!_ skills. "Angels too, and Silence. All there, on Trenzalore, and all after one great big crack in a wall. Do you remember?"

Another great _bzzt._ Clara could almost hear the voice of the childhood game in her head: _Twist it!_ "Um, yes? It was like two hours ago."

"Wrong. It never happened."

_Spin it!_ Whrrr!

"But—"

 "That's your faulty little human mind playing tricks on you. You think the universe just works like that, _hm_ , just throws together all the foes you've battled and battered _specifically_ from that one incarnation, as well as the old classics—"

_Flick it!_ Boink!

"—and just places them all around one tiny inconsequential little planet—"

_Flick it!_ Boink!

"—which for some incomprehensible reason just _happens_ to have a great fucking arse-crack in a wall—"

_Pull it!_ Whurrrrp.

"—which I dealt with a handful of centuries ago, by the way—"

_Nooooo! Game over!_

"...Do you have any idea why my TARDIS is making noises like a video game console on the brink of orgasm?"

"I, um, think it was more of a hand-held thing? I got the high score of three-fifty once. It made a congratulatory noise and everything."

"Congratulations. Now, I don't know about you, Claire—"

"Clara."

"—but it seemed to me that we've been increasingly living in a universe riddled by plot holes and nonsensical cheap shockers. Do you know, Claire, after more than a millennia of zipping about this big old cosmos and several other parallel ones too, you know the one thing I can tell you about it with absolute certainty?"

"It's _Clara._ "

"It's that the universe doesn't play nice. It doesn't like to tie up loose ends and have satisfying yet dramatic conclusions. _It's not a fucking storybook_ , and it doesn't play like one. No, you know what Trenzalore was, Claire? It was _bad fucking writing._ We're living in a universe where some supercilious cock-rag has been manhandling the typewriter for too long. And if there's one thing in this universe that I can't stand, Claire, it's supercilious cock-rags."  

"... I'm not sure I understand."

"I didn't expect you would. What we just experienced wasn't reality at all, it was a cock-rag's piss-poor _imitation_ of reality. But you fret not, girl, you just keep standing there looking like a plot device on very nice legs. In the meantime..."

He shoved one great huge lever the length of the console up, and with a twang like a _Bop It!_ congratulating you on your high score, the TARDIS lurched forward through time and space and varying dimensions.

"...I have work to do."

It was not a smooth ride. The record player got stuck, repeating one word over and over – a word the Doctor had never thought to apply to himself before but which rather suited him down to the ground.

There was a great reverberating thud that signified the landing of their short trip.

"Right, now," the Doctor rubbed his wrists and tried to pull at his clavicle, actions that made no sense without a shirt (specifically a bow tie). "Look sharp, girl. Time to go talk to myself for a while."

He pushed open the exterior doors.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, teeth flashing in a grin. "Home from home!"

He disappeared, and Clara deliberated for a moment before following. She never could resist a peek out of those doors, naked Time Lord in the way or no. 

She was glad she peeked.

The sight before them, Clara thought, would not have looked out of place as a _Downton Abbey_ set. Gleaming wood floors, towering bookcases, squashy, velvet armchairs on richly patterned rugs, gentle candlelight...

And starlight. That was were similarities to the early twentieth century ended. Because stood unmistakably in the centre of the room, with four thick iron pillars running into the star-studded ceiling (or just sky?), all brass and mahogany and unearthly blue light, was a console.

They were inside a TARDIS. A gorgeous, cosy, Victorian brothel of a TARDIS, but an alien time machine nonetheless.

As she watched, a shooting star rained sparks across the ceiling, then another – two cosmic paper cuts that healed themselves in moments.

"Doctor," she whispered. Her eyes were huge, and she realised that, for the first time in what felt like days, her lips were twitching in involuntary delight. "Who— _which_ of you does this belong to?"

"You don't remember?" The Doctor was examining the console, peering at its little crystal compasses and analogue clocks. "What, after all those times you saved my life in this very room, one little Earth woman against the greatest intelligence in the known universe?"

Hidden from view from the waist-down, Clara could look at him once more. "Doctor, what are you on about?"

He cast her a brief glance.

"Just checking, Clara," – he snapped his fingers in momentary glee at recalling the name – "whether your memories are reconfiguring yet. Just being out of that timeline, it's like breathing clean air after choking on carbon monoxide. Clouds your mind, and you'll lie down there thinking you're sick, when all you'd need to do to feel better would be to run for your life."

It was possibly the longest speech he had given so far without cursing. Clara edged forward, careful to keep her eyes fixed on a console pillar and nowhere near the now fully spotlight-lit Doctor.

"So, we're safe now, is that it? We're away from that timeline?"

"By docking here, yes. I homed in on an old life, one I knew was completely safe. I reckon the events of the past few series ought to be editing themselves as we speak, just you watch. They'll be cutting out all the melodramatic heroics, gratuitous romance, the senseless sexual tension, the delirious story arcs. And you, especially. I expect it will knock a healthy dose of characterisation into you, Clara. Just wait and see."

Clara raised her brows. "As simple as that?"

The Doctor saw her brows and raised his own. He won the hand, and grinned. "No, Clara. Of course not."

From behind them came a muffled _mmgghh_ , like somebody choking. They spun around.

To someone who was, indeed, choking. The girl was head to foot in a frilly white nightdress, with ruffled blonde locks that fell past her shoulders, and the moment she swallowed her spoonful of cereal she screamed.

"DOCTOOOOOR!"

"Ah, Charley," said the Doctor she probably was not referring to. "It's been a while."

To her credit, the girl didn't even drop the spoon.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor, unlike his usually-human companions, had never needed much sleep. Nor, like humans, did he possess an internal body clock dictated by the spin length of a tiny blue planet somewhere in the Milky Way. As such, when left to himself, days tended to pass him by like seconds: he had once lost a whole week without moving, in his armchair reading the entire _Discworld_ series; he'd spent two years floating nonstop through the Carspichoria Complex, working on a thesis that might solve its zero-gravity arachnid infestation.

Two days alone in his lab was nothing, but if the Doctor was ever capable of feeling what his human friends would call the early hours of the morning, this was it.

The Earl Grey was bubbling ferociously. Beside it an Emperor Grey (the twenty-fourth century upgrade) was spitting golden flame. Above a Bunsen burner the stewed remains of what had once been a fine lapsang souchong drifted contentedly amongst citric acid.

And the Doctor's eighth incarnation, wearing elbow-high latex gloves and a lab coat much too big for him, gulped down the last of his honeyed English Breakfast, readjusted his magnifying goggles, and glared at many teapots before him.

Quite a few of them glared back.

"Oh, come _on,_ it's not like I'm asking you to brew me an expresso!" he burst out, waving his sugar tongs in exasperation.

Several of the fainter-hearted teacups rattled in fear. The Doctor sighed.

"All right, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout. Here..."

He pulled his goggles onto his forehead and slumped down until he was eye-height with the worktop, and his teacups. His favourite, a dainty turquoise one that shone like sunlit butterfly wings, shied away.

"What's the matter my friend, hm? Not ten minutes ago we were on fire, and not even literally this time – what's happened? The temporal flux is running smoothly, and everything connected tight. I don't understand..."

That was when he heard it. Faint at first, then again.

" _Doctooor_..."

The Doctor bolted to his feet. Charley! 

He had showed her the way to the library, the swimming pool, the butterfly room, the ice rink, and asked that she not disturb him for just a few days – unless, of course, it was urgent.

The sugar tongs fell to the floor.

"Please excuse me, my friends, I'll be right back!" 

 

~

 

" _Now_ will you please get dressed?" Clara hissed, crossing her arms in exactly the same way she often resorted to in class. "This poor girl's never done anything to harm you."

"Actually, she did poke me rather hard with a rustless holy blade once."

"Not relevant, Doctor!"

"Well then, when the good _other_ Doctor arrives I'll have him show you the scar!" He strode forward. "Now, Miss Pollard—"

"Don't come a step closer!" Charley Pollard said shrilly, clutching her cereal bowl with both hands and staring very precisely at the Doctor's feet. She went on, her voice strong. "Now, I don't know who you are or what culture you're from—"

"Great fucking neutrinos, girl—"

"But from where _I'm_ from you'd be locked up and given a good telling off for going about looking like that – and for speaking to a lady as such as well!" she added, as the Doctor open his mouth again. The young woman raised her chin and met Clara's eyes. "Now. Kindly tell how you entered this craft and the Doctor and I will see you on your way. Go on!"

"Charley, look behind me, it's the _fucking TARDIS_ , have I not explained to you the basic laws of time travel yet?"

"How do you know my—"

Clara made to step forward. "Doctor—"

" _CHARLEY!_ "

Charley spun around at the distant call. "Doctor!" she cried. "In here! I'm in the console room!"

Behind her the Doctor's twelfth incarnation took a step forward.

A mistake.

Charley whirled around and, panicked, launched her cereal bowl at the offending target.

It met its aim with a thud, a wet splash, and finally a great smash as the bowl shattered to pieces on the floor. Tiny wholewheat, fibre-rich loops made little tinkling sounds as they scattered. 

The Time Lord soon followed, falling first to his knees, then flat on his face. He lay still.

Charley froze. Clara froze.

And from the other side of the room, two seconds behind his cry of alarm, came another Doctor. Almost tripping up over his huge coat, messy curls flying behind him, the eighth incarnation of the Doctor rushed over the moment he saw his companion.

"Charley! Charley, are you—"

Then halted at the sight of the intruders.

“Oh. Who are you?" he asked sharply of Clara then, without waiting for an answer, turned to Charley. "Charley, who are these people?"

Charley was pink in the cheeks and looked close to tears. "I don't know, Doctor, they just appeared! And look, it's the TARDIS!"

"The...? Oh no..."

"I didn't mean to hurt him! Is he – dead?"

The Doctor tore his eyes from the TARDIS and stood over the Doctor. His eyes moved quickly across the scene before him. "Hmm, I wouldn't have thought so; it was actually just an old Ikea piece." He turned to Clara and smiled shortly. "Ah, not to be in any way discourteous but would you mind explaining why you and your friend are both standing – well, mostly standing – unannounced in my TARDIS? Of particular interest to me right now is why your friend is stark naked and dripping delicious morning sustenance on my best Markrovian rug."

Clara was arching one brow and quietly humming in appreciation to herself. "Well..." she began. He may have been a little on the short side, but then, so was she. She extended a hand, flipping her shining hair across her shoulder in time with her most winning smile. "I'm Clara—"

Her own Doctor, rather less charmingly, chose that moment to come to. He spat several breakfast loops across the floor.

"It's fucking Charkrovian, you great fucking Victorian hairball."

Clara's hand fell, dejected, her her side.

"Ah, hello my friend, how are you feeling?" The Doctor crouched down, quite beside himself. "Markroff, Charkroff, it's a binary system, easy enough mistake. And would you mind toning the language down a bit, it's very unbecoming of a man."

"If you'd mind toning the fucking steampunk down…” The Doctor's eyes closed again, and he was still.

"That's not all that's unbecoming of him," Charley sniffed. "He's one of the crudest and most vulgar men I've ever met! Can't we make him put some clothes on?"

"Well I expect you'd be a little riled if someone unexpectedly covered you in their breakfast meal, wouldn't you, Charley? Excellent aim by the way, were you standing were you are now?"

"I really don't think that's important right now, Doctor.... I was though, wasn't I brilliant?"

Clara cleared her throat shyly. "Ahem? I'm really all for getting this man in some clothes too, if you're offering..?"

"Oh, I'm sure he can see himself to the wardrobe, he knows the way, don't you old chap, hm? Oh. No, maybe not in this state. Come on, let's help you up... Charley? There we go..."

An arm each and the conscious Doctor was supporting the unconscious, trying not to grimace under the weight. Their respective companions backed off a safe distance.

"He knows the way?" Charley repeated. She looked from the TARDIS exterior to its owner, and back again. "Doctor, do you mean to say that this vile man, he's...?"

"Me?" Charley's Doctor pursed his lips and looked his future self up and down, his gaze quick but thorough, calculating. He seemed neither pleased nor displeased, only curious. He said mildly, "Yes, it would seem so, wouldn't it?"

Charley looked devastated. Clara, who knew the feeling, laid a hand on her shoulder.

The Doctor turned to them.

"Clara, I'm sure it will be lovely to meet you someday, and Charley, I pre-emptively apologise for my indecorous etiquette. Now why don't you two go have a cup of tea while I get myself straightened out? I'll be back in a jiffy."

"Yes, Doctor," said Charley, as Clara called, "It will be lovely to meet you too!"

The Doctor hobbled off, Doctor in tow. The two girls looked at each other as his shuffling footsteps faded away.

"Er, sorry about all that," Clara pulled a tight smile. "Newly regenerated. Apparently they all act a bit scrambled for a while."

"Yes," said Charley rather faintly. "I'm sure the Doctor will be able to talk some sense into... into himself."

An awkward silence ensued. 

And continued.

 

 


End file.
